In the past couple of months, I have received many calls and texts from people struggling to lose weight, arthritis related pains or having serious issues with their colon such as (IBS, colitis and constipation). All of these people are less than 55 years old. So what's really happening?

Carefully read the following analogy.

What happens when the electrical circuit in your house gets overloaded? The circuit breaker "trips" leading to shutdown of the electrical energy supply to a portion of the house, isn't it? This happens because the electrical system is not designed to handle the electrical load that is more than it is designed for. If the excess energy demand on the electrical circuit happens regularly, the wiring of the circuit breaker begin to slowly wear out which could lead to fires and essentially burn down the house.

Now think of the house as your body. It is perfectly designed to handle certain amount of toxins that are either generated within the body or coming from an outside source such as food or our environment. Our liver is like a circuit breaker system managing our body's energy needs. In addition to that it also has a critical job of making the toxins harmless through a "Two Phase" detoxification process. However, when the supply of toxins is persistent and is more than the liver can handle, this amazing organ begins to slow down. This leads to a backlog of toxins which must be neutralized but the liver is already working at it's maximum capacity. Since the liver cannot let the toxins freely move through circulatory system of the body, they get stored in different parts of the body including FAT cells, joints, various organs etc. These stored toxins begin to damage our very DNA which in turn causes a host of chronic / auto immune diseases.

So the "basic" cause behind most diseases is what is called "systemic toxicity". In other words, the body is overloaded with toxins. Most of the toxins are coming directly from our food sources such as processed foods/ fast foods/ snacks / deserts etc. They put a huge load on the critical cleansing & detox organs (liver, kidney, lungs, and colon). When the toxins are in manageable amount our body is perfectly well equipped to safely detoxify and eliminate them. However, for the vast majority of people this is not the case. Most people have overburdened their body's detoxification organs and thus need outside intervention in the form of a well designed cleanse.

What is the rel purpose of a cleanse?

The real purpose of a cleanse is to give a much needed break to body's internal detoxification organs such as liver, kidney, colon etc so they can be "recharged". We do this by consciously avoiding ALL harmful foods/drinks so the toxic load is lessened on our organs. We also eat certain foods that reinvigorate our liver, kidney and colon. Unfortunately, you can't do a proper cleanse in 3, 5 or 7 days. It takes a minimum of 14 days to see results that last for few months.

Sometimes, we see someone doing a cleanse and we want to follow them. This can easily become very complicated specially if one is storing high levels of toxins in the body. The correct way to do a cleanse involves first following the "pre" cleanse instructions for few days. Doing a cleanse without properly preparing the body in advance can cause  serious detox symptoms which can become very uncomfortable. Similarly, it is important to follow the "post" cleanse instructions so we don't end-up losing the cleanse benefits. That is why doing a cleanse under the guidance of health coach is so important. It takes out all the guess work on your part as you just simply follow the instructions.

Benefits of a well designed cleanse:

There are numerous benefits of a well designed cleanse. Here are some of them.

1. Improves the effectiveness of various detoxification systems and elimination organs which in turn allows them to efficiently eliminate the toxins from the body

2. Encourages healthy weight loss

3. Increases energy & vitality

4. Lessens pain and inflammation

5. Help overcome cravings for certain unhealthy foods and drinks

6. Make you become more aware of your body and the food related choices.

7. Improve digestion / Feel lighter

8. Naturally lowers blood sugar levels

9. Better quality of sleep

10. Balances hormones